Triplanetary
Straight across the saloon he made his way, paying no attention to the
inert forms scattered here and there. Going up to a blank wall, he
manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush with its surface, swung a
heavy door aside, and lifted out the Standish--a fearsome weapon. Squat,
huge, and heavy, it resembled somewhat an overgrown machine rifle, but
one possessing a thick, short telescope, with several opaque condensing
lenses and parabolic reflectors. Laboring under the weight of the thing,
he strode along corridors and clambered heavily down short stairways.
Finally he came to the purifier room, and grinned savagely as he saw the
greenish haze of light obscuring the door and walls--the shield was
still in place; the pirate was still inside, still flooding with the
terrible Vee-Two the _Hyperion's_ primary air.
He set his peculiar weapon down, unfolded its three massive legs,
crouched down behind it and threw in a switch. Dull red beams of
frightful intensity shot from the reflectors and sparks, almost of
lightning proportions, leaped from the shielding screen under their
impact. Roaring and snapping, the conflict went on for seconds; then,
under the superior force of the Standish, the greenish radiance gave
way. Behind it the metal of the door ran the gamut of color--red,
yellow, blinding whiter--then literally exploded; molten, vaporized,
burned away. Through the aperture thus made Costigan could plainly see
the pirate in the space-armor of the chief engineer--an armor which was
proof against rifle fire and which could reflect and neutralize for some
little time even the terrific beam Costigan was employing. Nor was the
pirate unarmed--a vicious flare of incandescence leaped from his
Lewiston, to spend its force in spitting, crackling pyrotechnics against
the ether-wall of the squat and monstrous Standish. But Costigan's
infernal machine did not rely only upon vibratory destruction. At almost
the first flash of the pirate's weapon the officer touched a trigger;
there was a double report, ear-shattering in that narrowly confined
space; and the pirate's body literally flew into mist as a half-kilogram
shell tore through his armor and exploded. Costigan shut off his beam,
and, with not the slightest softening of one hard lineament, stared
around the air-room; making sure that no serious damage had been done to
the vital machinery of the air-purifier--the very lungs of the great
space-ship.
Dismounting the Standish, he lugged it back up to the main saloon,
replaced it in its safe and again set the combination lock. Thence to
the lifeboat, where Clio cried out in relief as she saw that he was
unhurt.
"Oh, Conway, I've been so afraid something would happen to you!" she
exclaimed, as he led her rapidly upward toward the control room. "Of
course you...." she paused.
"Sure," he replied, laconically. "Nothing to it. How do you feel--about
back to normal?"
"All right, I think, except for being scared to death and just about out
of control. I don't suppose that I'll be good for anything, but whatever
I can do, count me in on."
"Fine--you may be needed, at that. Everybody's out, apparently, except
those who, like me, had a warning and could hold their breath until they
got to their suits."
"But how did you know what it was? You can't see it, nor smell it, nor
anything."
"You inhaled a second before I did, and I saw your eyes. I've been in it
before--and when you see a man get a jolt of that stuff just once, you
never forget it. The engineers down below got it first, of course--it
must have wiped them out. Then we got it in the saloon. Your passing out
warned me, and luckily I had enough breath left to give the word. Quite
a few of the fellows up above should have had time to get away--we'll
see 'em all in the control room."
"I suppose that was why you revived me--in payment for so kindly warning
you of the gas attack?" The girl laughed; shaky, but game.
"Something like that, probably," he answered, lightly. "Here we are--now
we'll soon find out what's going to happen next."
In the control room they saw at least a dozen armored figures; not now
rushing about, but seated at their instruments, tense and ready.
Fortunate it was that Costigan--veteran of space as he was, though young
in years--had been down in the saloon; fortunate that he had been
familiar with that horrible outlawed gas; fortunate that he had had the
presence of mind enough and sheer physical stamina enough to send his
warning without allowing one paralyzing trace to enter his own lungs.
Captain Bradley, the men on watch, and several other officers in their
quarters or in the wardrooms--space-hardened veterans all--had obeyed
instantly and without question the amplifiers' gasped command to "get
tight." Exhaling or inhaling, their air-passages had snapped as that
dread "Vee-Two" was heard, and they had literally jumped into their
armored suits of space--flushing them out with volume after volume of
unquestionable air; holding their breath to the last possible second,
until their straining lungs could endure no more.
Costigan waved the girl to a vacant bench, cautiously changed into his
own armor from the emergency suit he had been wearing, and approached
the captain.
"Anything in sight, sir?" he asked, saluting. "They should have started
something before this."
"They've started, but we can't locate them. We tried to send out a
general sector alarm, but that had hardly started when they blanketed
our wave. Look at that!"
Following the captain's eyes, Costigan stared at the high powered set of
the ship's operator. Upon the plate, instead of a moving, living,
three-dimensional picture, there was a flashing glare of blinding white
light; from the speaker, instead of intelligible speech, was issuing a
roaring, crackling stream of noise.
"It's impossible!" Bradley burst out, violently. "There's not a gram of
metal inside the fourth zone--within a hundred thousand kilometers--and
yet they must be close to send such a wave as that. But the Second
thinks not--what do you think, Costigan?" The bluff commander,
reactionary and of the old school as was his breed, was
furious--baffled, raging inwardly to come to grips with the invisible
and undetectable foe. Face to face with the inexplicable, however, he
listened to the younger men with unusual tolerance.
"It's not only possible; it's quite evident that they've got something
we haven't." Costigan's voice was bitter. "But why shouldn't they have?
Service ships never get anything until it's been experimented with for
years, but pirates and such always get the new stuff as soon as it's
discovered. The only good thing I can see is that we got part of a
message away, and the scouts can trace that interference out there. But
the pirates know that, too--it won't be long now," he concluded, grimly.
He spoke truly. Before another word was spoken the outer screen flared
white under a beam of terrific power, and simultaneously there appeared
upon one of the lookout plates a vivid picture of the pirate vessel--a
huge, black globe of steel, now emitting flaring offensive beams of
force. Her invisibility lost, now that she had gone into action, she lay
revealed in the middle of the first zone--at point-blank range.
Instantly the powerful weapons of the _Hyperion_ were brought to bear,
and in the blast of full-driven beams the stranger's screens flamed
incandescent. Heavy guns, under the recoil of whose fierce salvos, the
frame of the giant globe trembled and shuddered, shot out their tons of
high-explosive shell. But the pirate commander had known accurately the
strength of the liner, and knew that her armament was impotent against
the forces at his command. His screens were invulnerable, the giant
shells were exploded harmlessly in mid-space, miles from their
objective. And suddenly a frightened pencil of flame stabbed brilliantly
from the black hulk of the enemy. Through the empty ether it tore,
through the mighty defensive screens, through the tough metal of the
outer and inner walls. Every ether-defence of the _Hyperion_ vanished,
and her acceleration dropped to a quarter of its normal value.
"Right through the battery room!" Bradley groaned. "We're on the
emergency drive now. Our rays are done for, and we can't seem to put a
shell anywhere near her with our guns!"
But ineffective as the guns were, they were silenced forever as a
frightful beam of destruction stabbed relentlessly through the control
room, whiffing out of existence the pilot, gunnery, and lookout panels
and the men before them. The air rushed into space, and the suits of the
three survivors bulged out into drumhead tightness as the pressure in
the room decreased.
Costigan pushed the captain lightly toward a wall, then seized the girl
and leaped in the same direction.
"Let's get out of here, quick!" he cried, the miniature radio
instruments of the helmets automatically taking up the duty of
transmitting speech as the sound disks refused to function. "They can't
see us--our ether wall is still up and their spy-sprays can't get
through it from the outside, you know. They're working from blue-prints,
and they'll probably take your desk next," and even as they bounded
toward the door, now become the outer seal of an airlock, the
annihilating ray tore through the space which they had just quitted in
their flight.
Through the airlock, down through several levels of passengers' quarters
they hurried, and into a lifeboat, whose one doorway commanded the full
length of the third lounge--an ideal spot, either for defense or for
escape outward by means of the miniature cruiser. As they entered their
retreat they felt their weight begin to increase. More and more force
was applied to the helpless liner, until it was moving at normal
acceleration.
"What do you make of that, Costigan?" asked the captain. "Tractor
beams?"
"Apparently. They've got something, all right. They're taking us
somewhere, fast. I'll go get a couple of Standishes, and another suit of
armor--we'd better dig in," and soon the small room became a veritable
fortress, housing as it did, those two formidable engines of
destruction. Then the first officer made another and longer trip,
returning with a complete suit of triplanetary space armor, exactly like
those worn by the two men, but considerably smaller.
"Just as an added factor of safety, you'd better put this on,
Clio--those emergency suits aren't good for much in a battle. I don't
suppose that you ever fired a Standish, did you?"
"No, but I can soon learn how to do it," she replied, pluckily.
"Two is all that can work here at once, but you should know how to take
hold in case one of us goes out. And while you're changing suits you'd
better put on some stuff I've got here--Service special phones and
detectors. Stick this little disk onto your chest with this bit of tape;
low down, out of sight. Just under your wishbone is the best place. Take
off your wrist-watch and wear this one _continuously_--never take it off
for a second. Put on these pearls, and wear them all the time, too. Take
this capsule and hide it against your skin, some place where it can't be
found except by the most rigid search. Swallow it in an emergency--it
goes down easily and works just as well inside as outside. It is the
most important thing of all--you can get along with it alone if you lose
everything else, but without that capsule the whole system's shot to
pieces. With that outfit, if we should get separated, you can talk to
us--we're both wearing 'em, although somewhat different forms. You don't
need to talk loud--just a mutter will be enough. They're handy little
outfits, almost impossible to find, and capable of a lot of things."